Not much daylight left in the roof

The framers have made good progress in the last couple of weeks.  The house is mostly dried in now.  All the roof trusses are installed and the OSB sheathing is almost completely installed.  They were moving pretty quickly while we were on site today and by the time we left they had just about reached the peak of the main roof.  They also framed the two front gables and one rear gable which is cool because now the house is actually starting to look like our design.

To give you some perspective on the scale, here's a picture of me standing in what will eventually be a large sliding glass door separating the dining room from the back deck.  Above me is the gable on the guest bedroom on the second floor.

Another perspective shot is below showing me standing in the middle of our three master bedroom windows facing the backyard.  These windows will actually be made up of large rectangular windows with square transom windows on top of them.  The rectangles will be the operable windows and will be about six feet tall from top to bottom.

We're got some family travel starting the end of next week so we probably won't be able to get back up to the job site until the end of the first week in November.  By then the windows should be at least partially installed and the interior framing should be almost complete.  We finalized our fireplace selection this week.  We went with the Heat and Glo Northstar unit for the wood burner in the great room and a slimline gas fireplace for our bedroom.

We are also close to finalizing the interior doors.  We are going to go with Sun Mountain which was one of my suppliers when I had the door shop in San Francisco.  The picture below shows roughly how our doors will look except they will not have grooves in the panel and there won't be an arch on top.  

A roof over our heads?

More progress today up in the hills.  The crane was on site yesterday and the framers boomed all of the garage roof trusses as well as some on the house itself.  It got very windy and they had to shut down the crane operations but will be hopefully finishing up tomorrow afternoon.  They also used the crane to lift up some of the heavy wall sections that had been framed but were too large to be hand positioned.  One of these is the back wall of the great room.  You can see it in the picture below.  The large header above the big framed opening will support the weight of the roof table since so much of that wall will be filled in with windows.  You can also see some of the trusses above the guest room on the upper floor, left side of the picture as well as above the master bedroom & bunk room on the right side.

Below is a picture taken of that same framed great room wall from inside the house standing roughly where the front entry / foyer will flow into the great room.  

This next picture is taken from the front of the lot and shows what the garage looks like with the OSB on the front and shows the height of the main house relative to the garage.  There's still a connector roof that needs to have the trussed set (you can see them sitting on top of the framed front mudroom wall in this picture).

This last picture shows the scissor roof truss that will define the ceiling height / shape for the vaulted area above the great room / foyer.  The height is going to be about 23' above the finished floor.

Vertical progress

Things are really starting to get moving up at 11,400 feet.  After a couple of weeks on the road, I had a chance to head up to the mountains early this morning to see the progress on the framing.  It was very exciting to see the progress and start to really get a sense of the house taking shape on the lot.  

This first photo is taken from the driveway standing about 100' from the front of the house.  You can see that most of the first floor is framed and covered in OSB sheathing.  The breakfast nook is between the garage door and the front door of the house.  There was about four inches of snow on the ground this morning but it was a bright and sunny day today.

Walking around the back of the house, this picture shows the side of the dining room which will have a single swinging door and two windows.  It also shows the back of the house with the framed opening for the large, 4 panel sliding door that will lead to the deck from the back of the dining room.  The great room is still open in the back, the wall is framed but not yet raised into place because it's too heavy to do without a crane.  The right side of the picture shows the three tall windows that are in the master bedroom.

This picture shows those same master bedroom windows taken from a spot inside the great room.  

Taken from the same spot, looking straight out the back of the great room.  On the floor in front of where I'm standing you can see the framed wall that will be lifted into place with the crane on Tuesday.